Altered Images: New Visionaries in 21st Century Photography [Hardcover]

There is a certain school of so-called purity in photography which disdains Photoshop manipulation. I can't agree. As the editor of this intriguing art book (an artist named Jeremy Gibbs) points out in his introduction, manipulation and montage of images were a part of photographic art from the earliest days in the 19th century. The artists in this volume, most of them European, start from photographs but use imagination and software to create haunting works of fantasy. Mixing and joining images this way creates an infinity of moods, a sense of magic, a dream-like quality, and an implication that photography can be about a layer of reality beneath the surface, a poem instead of a science report.

However, this book, while interesting, is not necessarily the best selection of digital art. There are a number of striking, memorable images here. But Mr. Gibb's tastes are narrow and rather dark, and the selections tend to look as if they were all by the same artist. Then there are some 'humorous' images, clownish montages, which may be amusing to some but for me don't work at all. Finally, the interviews with the artists are poorly edited or translated and come across as gibberish - I wish the space had been used for photos instead.

There are many places online to see fantastic examples of photoshop and digital photography so this book is only one source among many.

See also the editor's other volume "Beauty in Decay" with more of his own work.

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